Jury Awards Professor $175,000

W&m Tenure Denial Violated Corr's Rights

March 24, 1989|By RONNIE CROCKER Staff Writer

RICHMOND — A Circuit Court jury recommended Thursday that former College of William and Mary law professor John B. Corr is entitled to $175,000 because his constitutional rights were violated when he was denied tenure in 1986.

Attorneys on both sides will argue this morning whether presiding Judge William E. Spain should accept the jury's recommendation that professor Glenn E. Coven Jr. pay his former colleague at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law $75,000 in actual damages and $100,000 in punitive damages.

Spain can let the full judgment stand or he can reduce it or set it aside.

The jury's decision, reached after almost three hours of deliberation, appeared to bring great relief to Corr, who testified he has suffered loss of sleep and other emotional distress since he was forced to leave W&M three years ago.

"I'm very grateful to the jury for the attention and the fairness they brought to this case," Corr said outside the courtroom. "I'm very sorry that it was ever necessary to have this suit."

The suit was brought on the grounds that Coven and Timothy J. Sullivan, Marshall-Wythe dean, conspired to block Corr's tenure application in retaliation for Corr speaking out a year earlier against the hiring of another professor.

Coven was one of two members of the law faculty status committee who voted against Corr. The overall vote was 4-2 in favor of recommending tenure, but Sullivan elected to deny it.

Pending a final ruling in the case, Corr declined further comment. Attorneys for Coven and Sullivan refused to let either of them comment.

On Tuesday Sullivan was dropped from the suit as an individual, but he remained as a defendant in his official capacity. State Comptroller Edward J. Mazur and W&M President Paul R. Verkuil were dropped earlier as well.

Spain also will be asked today to decide whether Corr should be reconsidered for tenure at W&M.

Alice Barr, who presided over the four-man, three-woman jury, said "the maliciousness in professor Coven's, in one of his letters to the president of the college," figured greatly in the decision to grant the punitive award. She said Coven objected that Corr was "obnoxious" in his correspondence, but that she never saw any of that in the evidence submitted to the jury.

Barr referred to a letter in which Coven told Verkuil that several members of the law faculty would resign if Corr were granted tenure. It was one of more than 50 documents presented by Corr's attorneys during the seven-day trial.

Witnesses said Coven called the chairman of the W&M procedural review committee after it ruled Corr was entitled to another hearing and derided Corr as a "clown," "lunatic" and "stupid son of a bitch." Coven also was said to have once interrupted another colleague during a faculty meeting and later explained he felt he might "tear the man's face off."

On the witness stand himself, Coven testified he was "not above taking whatever cheap shots I could to prove my point" when asked why he mentioned the Corr case in a 1986 memorandum he wrote urging the abolition of the faculty status committee.

Attorney Stephen W. Bricker, in final arguments for Corr, reminded the jury of Coven's outbursts in an attempt to characterize the defendant as a vengeful and mean-spirited person.

"That is the kind of man who would intend to hurt a colleague with whom he disagreed," Bricker said.

Assistant Attorney General Richard C. Kast, in his final arguments, admitted that Coven was a "hot-head," but said he was a professional who did not hold grudges. Kast repeated the defense assertions that Corr was legitimately denied tenure because of concerns about his teaching, scholarship and contributions to the smooth operation of the law school.

Joan W. Murphy, who defended the case along with Kast, said it has not been decided whether the college will appeal if Spain accepts the judgment. She also said there are "several options" about who will pay the award if it stands. She declined to say what those options include.